Marcus Pelegrimas - Teeth of Beasts

Cole threw himself at Paige as the whipcord extended from Lancroft’s pike. Since he wouldn’t get to her in time, he deflected the incoming snare with an upward swing of his spear. Paige dropped to a crouch, tucked the gun away and drew her other baton while running at Lancroft. She feinted with the sickle before swinging the machete, but was blocked by a move that sent a burst of sparks to the floor. Lancroft slashed her elbow, but she twisted all the way around and followed through with a swing from her machete that would have left most other opponents without a head.

Even though Lancroft seemed genuinely surprised by her last attempt, he still managed to duck under it and step away. “It’s too late to stop Pestilence,” he said while knocking Paige down with a clubbing blow from the shaft of the pike. “I’ve been infecting Nymar across the country with their portion of the disease since the early 1970s. The component festering in the leeches is derived from pollen. Very sweet, but very toxic. It’s only one of several lifetimes of work I’ve done. Work any Skinner should damn well appreciate!”

Paige rolled to get her feet under her while swinging at Lancroft’s legs. When the old man hopped over both weapons, Cole rushed straight at him. Lancroft deflected Cole’s spear and then willed his pike to curl around it so he could twist the weapon from Cole’s grasp. The thorns in the handle kept the spear in place, but also threatened to pull the skin from Cole’s hands in the process.

Paige swung at Lancroft’s neck, only to have him skillfully lean away from the sickle. After Cole forced the old man to twist away from a lunging stab with the spear, she hit Lancroft squarely in the back with her machete. It cut through several layers of Lancroft’s jacket, exposing the fresh bullet holes. Focusing on one ragged bull’s-eye, she sank the pointed end of her sickle into a bullet hole and drove all the way through the protective garment. Beneath that were thin metal plates, layered to protect the old man’s back while allowing for complete freedom of movement.

“I want to help, Dr. Lancroft,” the little boy said from the doorway connecting the temple to the workshop.

The old man edged along the opposite wall while spinning his weapon in a flow of constant motion to keep Cole and Paige at bay. Rico fired a shot from his corner, which didn’t do anything more than turn a few beads into powder and obliterate some more etchings. After that he made certain to keep at least one of the other Skinners between him and Rico’s corner. “Of course you want to help,” Lancroft said as he poked a shallow hole into Cole’s chest with a quick jab from his pike. “Be a good boy, Henry, and bring the others down here. Remember, though, you’re not allowed in my lab.” While blocking attacks from Cole and Paige, he still had enough speed to take a few swings of his own.

Paige used her machete for defense. Although that arm was getting hit, the hardened limb prevented Lancroft’s weapon from cutting too deeply. The pike was a blur and the rest of him moved in a fluid series of unpredictable bobs and weaves.

Fixing an intent scowl on Paige, he said, “Say what you want about my methods, but I never would have considered handing over human territory to Nymar vermin or abominations like that pack of Mongrels running wild through Kansas City.”

“So instead, you come up with Pestilence,” Paige replied. “Real noble.”

Lancroft backed toward the examination room. “After spending decades in laboratories without sticking my nose into the sun and hunting creatures that now are only footnotes in the most obscure legends, I would think you’d want to learn from me.”

Gunshots sounded from upstairs as hurried footsteps rushed the door and began stomping down into the workshop. The other garden-level windows were knocked in, allowing the smaller of the reawakened Mud People to squirm their way into the basement. Their strained wheezes were a foul wind that rolled out of the workshop to sully the Dryad’s makeshift temple.

Cole and Paige circled Lancroft so they could catch their breath and try to give Rico a clean shot. While they had used the respite to collect themselves and heal, Lancroft had done the same. All of his wounds were closed, including the ones that would have taken Paige a few days to shake off. As the Mud People started pushing into the temple, Lancroft said, “Wait a second, Henry.”

Stop.

All the Mud People obeyed the order.

“Maybe you just aren’t aware of what I’ve created,” Lancroft said to the other Skinners. “If you were able to study the bodies of the most recent Half Breed victims, you would have seen the nymph pheromones used to attract them. The same sort of modification will draw the Nymar to their deaths.”

“You mean like rat poison stuck inside a piece of candy?” Cole asked.

“Precisely,” Lancroft declared. “That way, the Half Breeds are killed as quickly and efficiently as possible. Your generation of Skinners have stopped learning and become nothing but soldiers. Have you even pieced together how the Half Breeds spread their curse?”

“I’ve seen it happen,” Cole said. “Anyone hurt by one of those things will become one.”

“Yes, but why do some of the wounded become Half Breeds while others can be healed as if they’d only been attacked by a dog?” Looking back and forth between Cole and Paige, he said, “How are we supposed to do any good if we don’t know the root of the problem?”

When he leaned in close to Paige, she lashed out with both weapons rather than listen to whatever he was going to say. Cole wanted to help her, but she’d sparked another blistering series of attacks that turned the space around them into a hissing tornado of wooden blades. Trying to inject himself into that was like deciding how to stick his hand into a rattling garbage disposal, so Cole positioned himself in front of the workshop where several Mud People stood watching. Henry stood there as well. The boy he’d possessed still seemed to have his head connected to his neck.

“It’s the marrow,” Lancroft snarled. Having reshaped his staff into the oval-shaped weapon he’d used to cut Ned down, he switched his entire stance and fighting style to accommodate the new weapon. “Half Breeds carry their sickness in their saliva, but it needs to make contact with bone marrow for it to take root. Just knowing one simple bit of information like that should make Half Breeds less of a problem. Just as knowing that Pestilence is an exotic virus and not the fabled creeping death of Incan and Mayan mythology.”

Panting after the relentless attack, Paige said, “I’ll be sure to put that tidbit in my journal and credit it to the fucking asshole who killed Ned Post.” She went on the offensive using both of her weapons like a pair of scissors. Her sickle was blocked before cutting Lancroft’s throat, but the machete came in to shave large portions of flesh from both of his arms. Even with his advanced healing, a healthy dose of pain flashed across his face.

When Henry saw Lancroft recoil, the boy anxiously bared crooked teeth that were covered in a slick coat of the substance kicked up from the back of his throat.

Desperate to keep the Mud People from charging, Cole decided to give Henry something more pertinent to listen to. “Is this the same offer you gave to Misonyk when you let him infect Henry?”

For the first time since the conversation started, Lancroft appeared shaken. He glanced at Henry, but the strain of the fight made it tougher for him to put on a convincing poker face. “Misonyk was more demon than Nymar. It’s because of him that I needed to dispose of my cherished reformatory. I poured my heart and soul into every stone of that institution. There is no way you could possibly know how much good I did there.”